


Melting Steel

by KGirlred



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Eventual Smut, F/M, Heavy Angst, Minutemen, Mother-Son Relationship, PTSD, Romance, Smut, War, institute, previous relationships, slow-burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2018-11-17 14:29:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11277198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KGirlred/pseuds/KGirlred
Summary: She is known as Blue. She likes things simple, uncluttered, clear like the sight of a scope down the barrel of a rifle. She isn’t a survivor, she is a wanderer. She has survived nothing, everything has taken a bit of her. She fell in love with a man she had no place with. She fell in love with his order but also his chaos. But she didn’t survive his love either.Annabel was once a soldier but she disappeared from the steel warriors and lost herself in the dust. She was a broken husk after she pulled the trigger on the man who had taught her how to carve a path for herself in the wastes. She was forced to obey and she broke. But little did the Commonwealth know, little did the Elder of the Brotherhood know, she was broken long before the bombs destroyed her world. She was broken and couldn’t be fixed in her suburban life, but the wasteland was a forge and she welcomed the flames.





	1. Prologue

A wise man once said that before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. I never intended to dig any graves, only to find answers. When I stumbled from that vault with ice in my veins and a fire in my lungs, I only wanted to know _why_. Why us? Why Shaun? Why Nate? Why me? I searched for answers but I held a shovel in my hands without realizing it. And I began to dig without feeling the dirt beneath my feet crumble. I began to dig and dig and when I had dug two graves, I kept going. A field of graves, all dug by my bleeding and scarred hands, all forged from the hate in my heart.

I never intended to dig graves but the world insisted on forcing my hands to sink into that soil and tear at the dirt until not even my tears or pain registered. I never wanted any of it.

 

⸸

 

“The Institute has foolishly chosen to grant you life. You simply should not exist. I don’t intend to debate this any longer. My orders stand.” My body shakes as I stare at Arthur, my eyes beseeching him, begging for him to change his orders, to show the mercy I know he has within him. An uncommon thing, that mercy, he was a hardened boy and an even harder man. But there are edges within him that have been softened, I’ve _seen_ it.

“It’s alright,” Danse says from beside me, his voice calm, collected, the complete opposite to my trembling hands and sharp breaths. A composed soldier, even now, even faced with judgment and hatred. “We did our best. You convinced me that I was wrong to be ashamed of my true identity and I thank you for it. Whatever you decide, know that I’m going to my grave with no anger and no regrets.”

“Touching,” Arthur sneers, the man I have come to know and care about completely gone from his voice. I sink my teeth into my lower lip to keep the tears at bay, to keep that unwelcome heartache trapped within me. “Either you execute Danse, or I will, Knight. The choice is yours.” _Knight_. I no longer want that title. I wish I had never joined the Brotherhood, wish I had never fallen in love with their Elder or become close friends with a Paladin, wish I could go back and change so many things.

But the Institute, my enemy, the director my son, and Danse, created by them, something that shouldn’t exist, that threatens humanity. It’s all a blur as my hands grip the revolver tighter and there’s a moment where my decision looms ahead of me. Aim that gun at Arthur or at Danse. A strange path, a terrifying path. More foreboding than the twisting, cracked roads of the wastes.

“For the good of the Brotherhood,” I whisper, my voice pathetically weak, “He needs to die.” The words hang in the air like a noose and I see sadness but understanding in Danse’s deep brown eyes. I despise the forgiveness that shines in them, despise myself for the finger that twitches on the trigger.

“Finally, you’ve come to your senses,” Arthur scoffs, his blue eyes cold. It makes me question whether the moments that we shared together were ever truly real, whether he ever cared about me or about his friendship with Danse.

But I turned my back on him, I couldn’t handle his choices and now I just want it all to be over.

“You may proceed, Knight.”

With a heavy heart, I raise the gun level with Danse and meet his eyes. They’re reassuring, strong. He’s always pushed me to be a better person, even when I was struggling with the darkness that consumed me.

Who gives a fuck anymore? I’ve abandoned my son, left my dead husband behind, walked away from my love for Arthur and now I’m going to execute one of the few friends I have.

I pull the trigger and I barely hear the shot as his head whips back and he crumbles to the ground. I stare at him in utter shock at my own irreversible actions.

He’s motionless. Like a heart never thudded in his chest, like his voice never called out to me when I ran headstrong into danger, on a reckless path.

“You did the right thing, Knight,” Arthur spits the title and I turn to him, numb to the core. I don’t see him, I don’t see the man I love despite it all, I see a man driven by his power. And for the first time since I met the man, I don’t see his strength or his resilience, I don’t see respect and care for his soldiers, I see a man driven by hate and despair. Much like what I have tried for months to wrangle myself out of.

“Go fuck yourself,” I wheeze, turning my back on him and stumbling over a rock. I don’t look back, even as he calls my name. No, not my name, my damned _title_ , something he rarely used before now. I run, my lungs screaming at me, my soul crying in pain and I leave it behind, leave it all behind because the life of a soldier and the life of a pre-war housewife were never meant to collide.


	2. Chapter 2

I wake with my heart lodged in my throat, my eyes snapping open to stare at the metal ceiling, the holes in it shabbily patched up with tape. I let out a breath as I take in my familiar surroundings. I’m not back at that bunker, I don’t have that gun to Danse’s head, I’m not looking at Maxon’s cold face one last time. I’m here, in this small settlement, tucked away in a pre-war caravan.

I roll over, brushing my thick, black hair from my eyes and look at the time on my pip-boy, the trusty gadget that has been with me for over a year now. A small crack in the corner of the screen needs to be repaired and so does the fraying straps but it is still in working order. I turn it off again when I confirm that it is still far too early to be awake.

I lay on my back, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. Months, that’s how long it’s been since I left everything I had managed to make for myself behind. Four months, if I’ve countered correctly. Two weeks since I arrived at this ramshackle settlement and one month since the brotherhood went ahead and destroyed the Institute. They had everything they had needed, I had given it to them, blind to the fact that they would ruin it all. I had hoped there would be a solution, that I could help come up with one since Shaun was the director but my ideas were all shot down when Maxson decided it all had to be destroyed. Four months since I left Maxson because of his plans and went in search of Danse, Maxon’s orders that I was blatantly ignoring looming over my head. Four months, one moment, that’s all it took for my life to spiral out of control once again.

I stand up, wanting fresh air to clear my head from such thoughts. I pull on a pair of jeans from the folded pile of clothes in my duffle bag before I swipe up my rifle, confirm the safety is on, position the hat that I found on my head that reminds me of those old western movies I found myself watching late at night when I couldn’t sleep during my university days. I slip my socked feet into my boots, tie the laces up tightly and frown at the dirt on them.

I step out of the caravan, glancing around the quiet area. I swing the strap of the rifle over my shoulder and march towards the lookout. The settlement is one street with dishevelled – but in the process of being repaired – houses, most of them two storeys. At the end of the cracked road is the lone watch tower that looks out over the mismatched metal walls and into the surrounding barren wasteland.

I climb up the lookout ladder and nudge the leg of the man sitting there with his gun across his lap. He jolts awake, coughing as he squints up at me. I resist curling a lip at the cigarette butts littered around the space, instead I offer the bearded man a polite smile, a guest I still am.

“I’ll take over,” I murmur and he nods, shuffling down the ladder. I kick the butts off the lookout, straighten the chair then sit, resting the barrel of the gun against the railing of the lookout and the stock against my shoulder. I look through the scope, scouring the quiet and dark area. The back of the settlement sits against a wide lake, not much can get through it so my gaze is overlooking the town and the surrounding area of spindly trees, cracked road, and skeletal power poles. The only things that seem to bother the settlement are Mirelurks from a nest nearby that I have the urge to clear out, and the usual bugs and nasties. Raiders haven’t found an interest in this place and the people here are lucky, I’ve seen plenty of settlements in my time of wandering to know the misfortune the wastes love to hand out.

I lean back in the chair, sitting the rifle across my lap and sit the hat on top of it, straightening its position before sliding my hands through my dark hair. I used to keep it cropped short, never letting it pass below my jaw. Now the length of it is getting too hard to maintain. I continue to miss the small necessity of shampoo and conditioner. The thick length now brushes against my collarbones but I usually pull it into a tight braid.

I place my hat back on my head after doing my hair, squinting through the darkness. I haven’t decided whether I’ll move on again yet or not but I have nowhere to go, no family, no friends, and no allies. The only people I had made ties with were the Brotherhood of Steel.

I close my eyes, once again trying to block out those memories. I need to leave it behind me, I need to move forward, make something out of myself other than a wreck of a mother, widow, and soldier. None of those things matter anymore, not with Shaun dead, Nate 60 years dead in the past, and being an insubordinate ex-Brotherhood Knight. 

I blink up at the moon hanging high in the sky, no clouds in the sky to cover the glistening expanse of stars. The night sky is a breathtaking show of sparkling light, no smog from the old-world to cover up its magnificence.

Something outside of the wall catches my eye and I pick up my rifle, the weight and balance familiar. I’ve practiced with this gun more times than I could possibly count, any time I felt the looming guilt creep up on my I would swipe it up, shove ear-plugs in my ears and shoot anything that could be used as a target.

Through the night-vision scope, I spot a shadow moving through a pile of rubbish. I flick the safety off and adjust the sight before taking the shot. The molerat jolts before slumping and I lower the gun. I switch the safety back on and turn my eyes back to the moon and watch its slow crawl across the sky, wondering what awaits me when that sun rises, what struggles I’ll have to face.

⸸

“Blue!” someone calls as I make my way down from the lookout, the sun having risen an hour ago, indicating that it’s time to swap shifts. I adjust my hat when I land on two feet at the bottom and meet the eyes of a young boy, a crooked grin on his face as he waves. I nod in return, tightening my grip on the strap of my gun over my shoulder as the boy approaches me. “We goin’ Mirelurk hunting today?” he asks.

“If you’re up for it,” I reply quietly and he plasters a smile on his face.

“Meet ya’ at the front gate in an hour,” he says and jogs off towards one of the homes that’s set up as a cafeteria. The boy is only about fourteen and the only one who seemed happy about letting an outsider into their secluded settlement. He has a vast knowledge of weaponry and is always eager to go out shooting though not many people want to brave the outside walls to go out with him. My skin starts to itch if I don’t get out from behind the walls and away from the staring and wary faces of the settlers.

I look towards where everyone gathers for breakfast before moving towards the shelter of my caravan. It was used to store scraps before I came along but the mayor of the place didn’t want me in any of the homes, didn’t want me near his people in case I put them in danger. I prefer having my own space and it’s a relief compared to the suffocating Prydwen.

I grab some extra bullets, placing them in the pouches of my belt and strapping my revolver to my thigh. I stand straight, tucking my black sweater more securely into my jeans and brushing a smudge of dirt from the sleeve.

I turn to leave, my hand brushing against the revolver, the painful memory sparking in my mind, filling my vision. The vividness of that moment still startles me, still clamps around my throat and threatens to strangle me into darkness. I press a hand to my stomach, bringing myself back to the current moment and trying to force my mind from such darkness.

I did what I did, I made a choice and I have to live with it, keep putting one foot in front of the other because it’s what I do. I keep going, I push through, stubbornness and resilience heavy in my heart. I continue forward even when it hurts because drawing breath is all I have anymore.

I find myself some food, avoiding conversation with the people around me, falling into the shadows where I feel most comfortable. I observe them with a careful eye, always searching for threats and dangers amongst my surroundings, a habit that I picked up not long after leaving the vault.

I shudder in remembrance of that horrible place. The cold steel, ghostly corridors, the echoing cackle of creatures that are little more than pests to me now. How the times have changed. From a quivering woman with tears streaming down her face and a trembling hand clasped uncertainly around a gun. To this wreck of a person that has seen death too many times to be able to sleep peacefully. The woman I am now is not the one that struggled through university, marriage, and motherhood. She doesn’t exist anymore and sometimes I question whether she really ever did exist. Sometimes I wonder whether the world was ever in relative peace or whether that was all some dream while I slumbered in the vault.

I finish eating my bland food and move towards the gates, dodging mingling people. I spy the lanky boy waiting by the gate, fiddling with the shotgun that he steals from his father. Not that the old man notices, always in a drunken stupor.

“You’re early,” I tell the boy, though I didn’t expect anything different. The kid is always eager to leave the settlement. He stands straighter, clasping the weapon tightly in his hands as I walk past him and approach the gate, dipping my hat to one of the men stationed there. The gates groan open and we slip through, walking along the crumbling road.

“Will this be the day you tell me where you come from?” the boy muses and I shake my head, eyes scanning our surroundings.

“It’ll be the same answer as always, Jack. My past doesn’t matter.” He huffs out a breath.

“But the mayor is always pestering me about it, why can’t you just tell him so he starts to trust you?” My shoulders tense, a trail of unease curling around my spine.

“I don’t want his trust,” I answer quietly. “Trust gets people killed.” Jack doesn’t reply, clearly lost for words. He’s too young to have seen the full extent this world can offer but old enough to know that life is fickle. These people don’t need to know I was once a soldier and rarely do I tell people that I’m a ‘pre-war relic’. None of it is important anymore. Things come and go, people change, trust is lost, once it’s gone it doesn’t matter. Dwelling on the past is only a distraction. “Shall we focus on the job at hand?” I suggest and he’s all too eager to raise his shotgun and advance with me towards the shallow stream where the Mirelurks habit.

None of it matters anymore. Not Nate. Not Danse. Especially not Arthur-God-damned-Maxson, the man who stole my heart and did what he pleased with it. 

Trust gets people killed. I trusted Arthur and Danse died. Never again will I repeat my mistakes.


	3. Chapter 3

I was as much surprised as everyone else to hear the thunderous roar of the vertibirds. My sight follows them as they cut through the sky, a trio coming towards the settlement. I lower the rifle, the setting sun bathing the people of the settlement in its last rays of light as they spill into the street to look towards the approaching vertibirds. A heavy sickness settles in my stomach as they advance and I jump down the ladder of the watch tower, my heart in my throat.

I stand amongst the people with a straight back and gaze locked on those machines as they draw closer. They come for me, I know it in my blood. For what reason, I have no idea. Something to do with pride and service, knowing Elder Maxson. The bastard never could learn to let things go.

I watch the mayor shove his way towards the gates as the vertibirds kick up dust behind the walls. I’m quick to move towards my small caravan, escaping notice.

With practiced ease, I pack my things, zip up my duffel bag and I’m ready to leave within seconds. I leave the caravan, keeping my head low as I move past people, searching for the shorter part of the walls that I can scale.

“There’s no Annabel here,” comes the loud growl of the mayor, the answering voices too low for me to catch. There is in fact an Annabel here but hopefully not for long. “Blue? You’re talking about Blue? The outsider that always wears that stupid hat?” I frown at that but reach the wall. I look up at it, taking a deep breath. “What are your soldiers doing?” cries the mayor. I throw my bag over the fence, wincing at the mess that’ll make of the folded clothes within. I grab onto a beam of the wall and begin climbing, cold metal biting into rough flesh. I leap over the top, tumbling to the ground and biting back a yelp as pain flashes through my ankle.

I push myself to my feet, taking a moment to dust myself off before I grab my bag and start limping away from the settlement. Leave the past in the past, never look back, that’s not your life anymore—

A blinding light pierces my eyes and I stumble back.

“Don’t move,” someone says, a female’s voice muffled by a helmet and I instantly know that noise comes from power armour. I freeze and squint at the soldier, wondering if it’s anyone that I know.

“Please, let me go.” The woman doesn’t answer, instead approaching me with thudding footsteps and a raised gun.

“Put the weapon and the bag on the ground, raise your hands and turn around,” she commands, her voice set in stones. With a moment of hesitation, I do as she says, recognising that this will never go my way.

“What does he want with me?” I question instead, turning around with raised hands.

“I don’t know,” she says, taking my revolver from its holster. She manages to carry my things in one hand, the duffel bag stuffed under her arm, keeping her gun trained on my back as she nudges me between the shoulder blades. “Walk,” she demands and I take a step forward, wincing when I put weight on my injured ankle. I walk to my fate, my doom, walk towards the man that destroyed my life when I already had nothing left. He ruined me, tossed me aside, used me when it was necessary. How I could have ever loved the man is beyond me.

We round the wall to the gate where the mayor continues to argue with the soldiers. I’m deaf to his words as I find the startling view of Elder Maxson amongst his soldier, standing above the mayor with his hands clasped behind his back. The shock of seeing him nearly sends me reeling back the way I came, not expecting to see him here in the flesh.

“The Brotherhood will not harm any of your people,” a man says to the mayor, Maxson watching with a distasteful eye.

“Whatever he wants from me, he can shove it up his arse,” I sneer and the soldier replies with a hard shove that sends me into the dirt. I fall at the feet of the soldiers, scraping my hands along sharp rocks and hissing in pain. Anger boils inside of me but I quickly push it down, composing myself as I slowly stand, coming face to face with Elder Maxson as he watches me with a raised brow. His blue eyes give me a once over and I resist spitting in his face at the disapproving look that passes across his features.

Seeing him, his chiselled face, his hair disorderly and the hollow circles prevalent beneath his eyes does an odd thing to my nerves. Like a bolt of lightning, I see him, I see the man I once knew, the man I once loved. And I want to throttle him for making me feel those old tugs at my heart.

I can kill him, kick the weak joints at the knees of the woman’s power armour, dive for Maxson, hook a leg behind his ankles and send him to the ground and have a heavy stone swinging towards his head before anyone can react. The scenario plays in my head but the pathetic pull of my heart, the burning of something solely primal low in my stomach, has me simply staring at his face, the scar that cuts across his cheek, getting lost in the trimmed, dark stubble that coats his square jaw, shorter than the last I saw him. There is no guard against the fragile pieces of my heart, not against this brutal man.

His broad chest rises and falls with a heavy breath but he says nothing, he doesn’t open his mouth and a part of me adds it to another reason why I hate him as he turns away. One of his other men is the one to speak.

“You have your orders,” he calls and I’m shoved to the vertibirds, my rage soaring. He doesn’t even have the nerve to speak to me after all this time. I have plenty of words to toss at him and none of them are kind. I want justice for Danse, I want him to see his mistakes, I want to shove my pain down his throat and force him to feel it as I have done. I want him to suffer as he made me suffer.

Shackles and an uncomfortable seat on cold metal are all I’m given, surrounded by soldiers, thankful the Elder isn’t with us, thankful that my duffle bag, rifle, and hat are within sight. The only things that I have in this world, the only things that I have managed to carve for myself as everything went to utter shit around me.

We rise from the ground, separating from steady and unforgiving land to shaky but clear skies. I press my head to the cold metal, staring out into the land, keeping myself out there and not in this small and crowded place. I let myself soar free through the clouds and separate myself from steel and hot bodies. I am not in this place, I am out there, free, an uncaged bird with unruffled feathers.

I watch the landscape change beneath us, the moon showing the towering buildings of Boston, a place too quiet and carrying too many ghosts for me to be near with steady breaths. Then the moon sparkles over water and highlights the monstrous, metal Prydwen, the pride and joy of the Brotherhood of Steel and a place I could never quite call home. I couldn’t breathe there and just seeing the steel and the too bright lights and the bustling airport below has my stomach twisting and bile rising in my throat.

Too many people, too much heat, too much, it’s too much.

I squeeze my eyes closed, clenching my teeth together until my jaw aches. I picture a life before, a life I could barely live. The green grass, the yapping dogs, the bright houses. The metal cars, too small to possibly fit a person with enough air to breathe. I rode a bike, felt the wind in my short hair, breathed in the scent of Autumn, the fresh smell of wet leaves and freshly mowed grass. I had breathed and continued to try to breathe, even as my chest tightened at the thought of the classrooms, the sea of faces, all talking, too much noise. My lungs nearly exploding, the air gone, taken by the people around me.

“Out,” someone says in a low voice and my eyes snap open, seeing that the vertibird is safely docked on the Prydwen. A whimper nearly leaves my lips as my eyes land on that single, narrow door that leads to the tight halls. I can’t. I won’t. “Now,” snarls the soldier again and I’m yanked from the metal seat, stumbling on the platform that dangles over the airport. My knees are weak, trembling horribly. I can’t be weak. I won’t.

I lift my head, draw in my last breath of clean air and march forward to those dark halls and looming steel. Whatever is coming, I will find a way out of it, I will find a way to open land and a clear expanse of sky. I promise myself this freedom before I’m thrust into the darkness.

 

⸸

 

I scratched angrily at the sleeve of my ghastly orange jumpsuit, the streaks of mud seemingly endless. I refused to ask for yet another suit, refused to continue to let this endless battle win. I huffed out another breath, adjusting the weight of the thick bag under my arm and continued on my way through the dark and desolated halls of the Prydwen to the showers. Only the hum of the engines accompanied me that late at night, everyone else either asleep or having found a dark corner to amuse themselves. It’s the only time I got a moment to myself and there’s only me in the showers, blissfully alone without scrutiny.

“What are you doing, Knight?” I jumped at the deep rumble of a voice and spun around, coming face to face with Elder Maxson. I gaped at him for a long moment, not used to seeing him out of his thick battle coat. A pair of jeans and a tight t-shirt the only thing he wore. I blew a short strand of black hair from my eyes before answering, one of his thick brows raised.

“Heading to the showers, sir,” I said in the most confident voice I could muster being caught off guard without the presence of Danse at my side or someone else to draw the Elder’s fierce blue eyes from me.

“This late?” he questioned and I swallowed.

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?” He leaned against the wall, studying me with his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“Well,” I muttered, trying to think of an excuse apart from my own absurd self-consciousness. But Maxson seemed to know about everything that transpired within the walls of his ship. I sighed, dropping my gaze to my shuffling feet. “The showers are empty at this time of night so that’s when I go.” He’s silent in answer and I continued to shuffle beneath his scrutiny.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked further and my stomach twisted. I gnawed on my lip, peeking up at him through my thick lashes and found his gaze still steadily watching me, eyes flicking to my lips when I ran my tongue over the gnawed area. I pulled the small bag from under my arm and unzipped it, revealing the bundle of sweet smelling soaps and tubes of toothpaste, things I had gone through a lot of hardship to collect in the wastes.

“I don’t like the smell of the soap here,” I said in a quiet voice. “I also don’t like sharing.” The laugh that burst from his lips had me staring at him in bewilderment. I hadn’t heard him laugh before, the scar on his cheek giving him a lopsided but no less endearing grin.

“And here I thought you were up to no good,” he chuckled softly and I managed a smile, relieved to be greeted with amusement and not annoyance. “You may resume your task, Knight,” he said, quiet mirth in his gaze as he pushed away from the steel wall. I dipped my head, keeping him in my sight.

“Thank you, sir,” I murmured and shuffled towards the showers, my heart thumping wildly the whole way there. I was still new to it all, falling into line, taking orders, and I stuck out like a sore thumb because of it. His blue eyes seemed to track my movements with every step I took, it was unnerving but also strangely engaging.


	4. Chapter 4

Shaky breaths leave my lips but I keep my steps steady. My eyes dart to the soldiers that watch me carefully and I recognise some but they can’t seem to meet my gaze so I keep my eyes to the echoing steel beneath my feet.

This place was never my home and I left every chance I had, scouring the wastes for scraps of technology, eliminating synths, helping young Squires down at the airport. I avoided the slim halls with everything I had. But I still know these halls like the back of my hand and I know the path I walk. Towards the Elder, towards that dome of windows overlooking the dark reaches of Boston. It was one of the few places I didn’t feel as though the walls were crushing me. But I feel no happiness now as I’m led into the wide room and see Elder Maxson looking over the land he has ‘cleansed’, hands clasped behind his back.

I stand tall, short nails digging into my palms as I keep steely eyes on his tense back. He will not break me again, he will not bring me to my knees, he never has and never will own me.

We stand in silence, his soldiers leaving us alone. My ragged breaths fill the air, my lungs squeezing painfully in my chest as I wait for him to speak, tell me my crimes, execute me, beat me, whatever it is he does to traitors.

“I’ve spent a long time searching for you, Annabel,” he says quietly, his voice gravelly and low. The handcuffs around my wrists bite into my skin as I clench my fists. “You always had a way of becoming a ghost.”

“What do you want?” I question, my voice wavering.

“Me?” He gives me a chuckle that holds no warmth and he finally turns to me, his eyes swimming with darkness, his lips pressed into a cruel line. “I want nothing from you,” he spits and my fingers tremble.

“Then why am I here? I left for a reason, you shouldn’t have come looking.”

“A part of me wanted closure, I suppose,” he says, squaring his shoulders and looking down at me with distaste. “I gave you everything, a home, food, a title, and you threw it in my face for a synth.”

“He was your friend,” I say in a small voice and a flicker of pain passes across his face before he slips that mask back into place, the devoted leader, ready to make the tough decisions, even if they are wrong but justified to him.

“You pulled the trigger,” he answers quietly and my lungs force the rest of the air from my body and I nearly choke. I see it every time I close my eyes, the image of my hand around the handle of the gun, my finger trembling over the trigger, burned into the back of my eyelids. His jolt, the body tumbling to the ground, the very real and human blood that pooled beneath him branding me like hot iron.

Yes, I pulled the trigger. I may as well have pulled it on myself too in that moment for what it’s done to me.

“Have you come to gloat about your winnings, about how many innocents you killed?” my voice is not my own as I say this, it’s hollow, faraway, belonging to a woman that is braver than the one that stands before Maxson with little of herself left.

“I tried to save as many as I could,” he says and turns away, stepping towards that expanse of windows.

“You didn’t try, Elder Maxson,” I murmur, my eyes falling to the layer of dust on my boots. “I begged you to find another way, that _I_ could find another way, but you refused. You speak of honour and duty but you are so deluded by your own pride that you don’t even care how many innocent people died. There were families in the Institute, people with true intentions of helping the world but you don’t care, do you?” I step towards him, my lip curling with anger and hatred, the words boiling within me. “Because anything that isn’t fighting beneath your banner of might needs to be destroyed. You call yourself the good guy yet you don’t even see all of the blood—”

“I don’t call myself such a thing, Annabel,” he says without turning but the pain in his voice gives me pause. “I thought…” his words break away. His hands come away from his lower back and he grips the railing, leaning against it and taking a shuddering breath. “I could have done things differently, I know that. But the synths are not people, they can’t live amongst people, it’s _wrong_.” Silence stretches between us and I watch him. Maxson has a conscious, he buries it down beneath layers of supposed steel but I always saw it. Everyone has demons they battle with, he just likes to keep his behind closed doors.

I close my eyes, remember spending a night in his quarters, I had been wounded, gnawed at by some vicious beast and I couldn’t be alone, the darkness had seemed to seep into my head and nestle there, refusing to let me sleep. So, I’d spent the night with Maxson, simply closed my eyes in his arms with his warmth at my back. But I remember, I remember the way he had jolted in his sleep, his incoherent mutterings. The man has blood on his hands and the horrors of the things he has had to do in his years, even young as he is, has a way of sinking it’s claws into him when his shields are lax.

“Why am I here?” I question again, hating the guilt that I feel at tossing such words at him. I know he struggles but he doesn’t deserve my kindness, not after everything he’s taken from me.

“I found your son in the Institute,” he says and it’s like a knife twisting in my gut, sudden and fierce. My son. Yes, I remember my son. A man with twisted ideals and chaotic convictions, no better than the man that stands before me. I knew my son could not be saved, that he was bent on blood.

“There was nothing I could do to save him,” I whisper, my eyes sightless. He’d called me mother and it had made me feel sick. He wasn’t my son. He had shared the same silver eyes, the same urge for cleanliness and order. But his misgivings had taken him down a dark path.

“I got him out, Annabel,” Maxson says, turning to me again but my ears don’t hear him properly. My son was a murderer, I couldn’t save him. “Annabel.” I meet his blue eyes and give a quick shake of my head.

“What?”

“I got your son out of the Institute, before it was destroyed.” I gape at him, finally digesting his words. He saved the leader of the cause he was bent on destroying? No, that’s impossible. “He asks for you every day. He looks like you too, has your black hair, your smile…” I stop listening, watching his mouth move but his words are a muffled haze in my ears. The man who had called me mother was a sixty-year-old killer with grey hair and had never cared for me. Maxson couldn’t have saved him, it’s not possible.

Then it suddenly dawns on me. Like a brick connecting with my cheek and leaving a deep pounding behind my eyes and a loud screech in my ears. The lies I had told Maxson, that my son was within the Institute but I couldn’t reach him. I had never told him that Shaun was the active leader of the organization, I had never said a word of it and I had erased all evidence that he was. Maxson doesn’t know. My son. My son is dead but the little black haired boy with the large silver eyes was not dead. But he may as well be because he is a synth.

“He’s here?” I ask quietly and Maxson gives a stiff nod, stepping closer to me.

“I can take you to him. No harm will come to you here, Annabel.” He reaches for the cuffs at my wrists but I stumble away, my breaths short and broken. My son is dead and whatever little boy I am going to see is _not_ my son. He is a replica of the boy I lost, he is a fake, a replacement. He will never be mine.

“Don’t touch me,” I gasp, the walls closing around me, the steel herding me into a corner. Where is the air? This place has stolen it from my lungs as it has stolen everything else. My son died in Vault 111 and in a way, I did too. He is not my son and I am… I am… The air is gone and darkness swims through my head, dragging me down into its cold depths.


	5. Chapter 5

I wake on a stiff mattress with a pounding head. I’m quick to sit up, my mind covered with a layer of dust but I’m very aware of where I am and the events that brought me here. Maxson and the synth boy that he believes is my son.

A tray sits on the bedside table, containing the slop they call food around here and a metal cup filled with water. I raise the water to my nose before I drink, eyeing my small surroundings as I do, willing my heart to stay steady. I need to get out of this place.

I stand without touching the food, having no stomach for it. I straighten my clothing and move to the door. I press against it but find it locked. Suddenly my heart is in my throat, clogging my airway as I shove against the door. I’m stuck in here, in this small place with not enough air. There’s nowhere to move, no place to escape. A sob claws its way up my throat as I uselessly pound at the steel door, lungs shuddering, heart squeezing.

I need to get out, now. I can’t… I can’t be here.

The door flies open and I stumble into the hall but there’s no air here either. It reeks of steel and oil. I fall through the hall, unaware of anything around me apart from the erratic beat of my heart. It took me months of slow exposure to this place to tolerate it. I can’t be a prisoner, I can’t be caged, forced into the dark. Not again, not ever again.

In a past life it was too many people, a sea of faces all looming and surrounding me, closing in on me. Then it was the space, the enclosure of the Vault, the cold steel, the gasping breaths. Screaming until my throat was raw with no one to help me, no one to hand me the key and show me the exit.

No, never again.

They don’t let me leave, soldiers bar the exits, herding me like a wild animal until I land in the circle of windows overlooking the skeletal Boston, clouds of pure white cluttered in the blue sky.

It’s not enough, it will never be enough but I grasp onto the railing and force air into my body as I collapse by the windows, looking out into the wide expanse of air.

“I apologise,” comes a voice from behind me but I know he followed me. I’m always aware of the shadows at my back and Maxson is one of them. “I had hoped to be there before you awoke to take you to… a better place.” I don’t reply, simply kneel by the windows and draw in shaky breaths, feeling both pathetic and murderous. He knows what it’s like for me, I drilled it into his skull that I hate this place, hate the narrow bunks, the layered walls, the rare exits. He showed me ways outside, he showed me where I could go to escape. He knows, yet he locked me up. Does he truly think I would hurt anyone here? People I once called my friends?

“Shove your pity up your arse,” I manage to grit out, shaking the panic from my mind. I press my forehead to the metal bar that separates me from the window and the outside, gripping it until my knuckles turn white. Maxson doesn’t answer. Usually my language would gift me with his trademark scowl until I tossed him a smile that would soften those sharp features. But I haven’t genuinely smiled for the longest time, not since coming face to face with my real son and Danse’s name on that fucking list. “Where’s the boy?” I ask, my lips unable to form the words ‘son’ when referring to him.

“Still asleep,” Maxson murmurs. “He has a tendency to oversleep, I believe it’s due to the fact he stays up all night reading comic books. The soldiers have taken quite the liking to him.” The laughter that bursts from my lips is cold, heartless. It’s a cackle of mock joy. Oh yes, the boy has become the life of the Prydwen, asking after his mommy and eating their food like he isn’t something that everyone here wants destroyed. The boy is a lie, pure and simple. “I understand if you’re feeling confused,” Maxson continues but I stand and whirl towards him.

“You understand?” That callous laugh bubbles on my lips again and I resist tilting my head back and letting it tumble from me, resist letting my insanity and hatred spill from me. “You are so goddamned _noble_. Coming to my rescue, gifting me with the child I have spent so long searching for. I know that boundless honour runs in your blood like a disease but please do keep it away from me because it’s sickening.” His shoulders tighten and I see him struggling with himself. Always the struggle to stay the stoic and uptight soldier. “You can’t help me, _sir_ ,” I spit. “I’m beyond even your righteousness and duty. I don’t want to see this kid and I don’t want to see you. Now, get me the fuck out of this prison before I start tearing my hair out.” His eyes are nearly my undoing, there’s no anger there, there’s never anger when I’m a hysterical mess, when he wants to help heal wounds he can’t even touch. His bright blue eyes are filled with sadness. Seeing me like this, a crumbling mess, is everything he has tried to prevent.

He used to try so damned hard to be good enough. To be clean, to get me out into the air as much as possible, to give me tasks to keep my feet moving. He could never treat me like one of his usual soldiers, not when I first laid eyes on him and nearly screeched at a smudge of grease on his thumb.

“You want to live your life moving from one place to the other, as a hired gun? You want to never have a home or anyone to watch your back?” he questions with a subtle tilt of his head. A curious little boy with too many responsibilities.

“I want my simplicity back,” I say quietly.

“Simple doesn’t exist in this world, Annabel,” he says but he doesn’t know that it didn’t exist in my other world either.

I lean against the railing and gaze at nothing, losing the battle within myself and becoming cold. Perhaps I’ll never be free of steel cages ever again in my life, perhaps I already have a chain and lock around my neck and someone threw away the key.

“What now?”

“Well,” he says and clears his throat, studying the lapels of his heavy, fur lined coat. “You meet your son and you… decide what will happen to him. Whether you leave with him or… another decision presents itself.” I watch him for a long moment.

“You care for him, don’t you?” I mutter and his eyes meet mine.

“Shaun is an intelligent boy, he’s bright and has a good future—”

“Future?” I snort and shake my head. My fingers tremble and I run them through my hair, loosening the braid until the dark locks spill over my shoulders, longer than when he last saw me. “What possible future could he have? Especially if he leaves with me?” The question leaves a frown on Maxson’s face as he watches me re-braid my hair tightly, my fingers accustomed to the familiar motions. “No, I think the best decision I could make is to leave him in your care, let you decide what he’s capable of.” I turn away as I tie the braid and look back to the ruined city, knowing that my own future was burned away when those bombs dropped. “I was never a very good mother anyway.” Nate was always the better parent. Gentle, understanding, and didn’t have the need to clean until raw fingers and a stinging nose was all that was left. A child was the worst thing that could have happened to someone like me, someone who couldn’t seem to control their irrationality. Nate would laugh, kiss my cheek, move past the problem as though it were nothing, not studying the terror in my eyes too closely when Shaun was thrust towards me with drool dripping from his chin. My body didn’t want the child either, unable to produce enough food for him and having to rely on bottles and formula to keep him alive.

“You have time to decide,” Maxson says from behind me, bringing me back to this wasteland, this chaotic, messy world where I’ve accepted that there’ll always be a smudge of dirt somewhere.

“I don’t want time, I want to leave.”

“We can’t all have what we want,” his words are quiet but they tug at my heart. He meant so much to me, he brought me to a stable place within the chaos. But the moment he refused to hear me about not outright destroying the Institute, about using their knowledge and resources and simply cutting the head of the problem away was the moment I realised that no, we can’t all have what we want. I can’t live in this world loving him but also knowing the blood that I had helped spill out of my need to be of use to him. I couldn’t be with him and be his soldier at the same time. “Annabel,” he begins, my name low and rough on his lips. I ignore the dark caress down my spine and dig nails into steel. “Why are you so adamant against seeing him?” The question is innocent enough. To him. To a man that hates synths for their tragedy to this world and had grown to care for one without knowing. Will the boy be the same as Danse? Will Maxson bury the clear care he has and replace it with vehemence?

I can’t pull that trigger again.

I can’t.

I won’t.

“I’m not fit to be a mother,” I say simply, my words icy even on my lips. They lack anything. I’m not fit to be anyone. I didn’t belong in the world that was turned to ash and I don’t belong in this one. I wasn’t fit to be a wife, a student, a lawyer, a mother, a survivor, a soldier. There is nothing here for me beyond ghosts and insanity.

“You can do anything you put your mind to.” He’s trying to be reassuring but I know he just wants this deal to be over. He doesn’t want me here anymore than I want to be here, there are too many memories within this steel cage.

I bow over the railing, a weight of exhaustion resting on my shoulders, squatting there like a dark blot on my life. I hate this helplessness, this directionless path.

“Fine,” I sigh, eyes closing as the sun reflects on what is left of the crumbling buildings, what is left of a world I was never quite familiar with. “I’ll see him.”


	6. Chapter 6

He sits at one of the benches in the mess hall, his legs swinging as he shovels porridge into his mouth, nodding intently in answer to whatever the soldier is saying before him. A mop of thick black hair falls over his forehead and he blows it from his eyes absently.

Everything within me freezes upon seeing him, his lanky form, his wide grin, his enthusiastic, silver eyes. And for a single moment I forget that he was created in a laboratory as a sick experiment, I forget that he’s not my son, the boy I had searched for through blood and pain. I forget, then I remember and my heart squeezes and I nearly run from the room. But Maxson is beside me and his presence draws the attention of everyone in the room and suddenly the little boy’s eyes are on me and I can’t seem to recall how to breathe.

He stands from his seat, recognition spreading across his features and his mouth opens in shock. I can’t seem to move as he rushes towards me and wraps his arms around my waist, a sob leaving his throat. But I think I’ve fallen into a state of disbelief as I stand there, a numb hand resting limply on one of his shoulders.

I had given everything of myself in search of this little boy and now he’s here, small arms wrapped around me but I only taste bitterness in my mouth. He’s not my son. He never can be. But he’ll be executed if he stays in this place. Maybe I don’t care, maybe I shouldn’t worry what happens to a little synth boy that thinks I’m his mother. But I cared for Danse and I can’t see that type of destruction again.

I shake myself from my thoughts and kneel before the boy, holding him at arm’s length and studying him. I can’t form any words but it seems I don’t need to as words spill from his lips in a steady stream. He speaks about Maxson, the soldiers, the Prydwen, the Institute, the things he’s heard about me. He talks with such bubbling excitement and I barely hear most of it. This little boy… so human, yet not. He never can be. I want to apologise to him, tell him how sorry I am that he was ever created but I can’t dim that light in his eyes. Such a pure light, born from true excitement, emotion, as real as the emotion Danse once had.

“Alright, kiddo,” Maxson interrupts, a light chuckle on his lips as he places a hand on the dark-haired boy’s shoulder and leads him away. “Go find something useful to do.” The boy begins to protest but one look from Maxson has him scurrying away.

I stay kneeled on that cold floor, a haze settling over me as I stare blankly where the boy had been. My son died when my husband died, when I died. I’m not his mother, I don’t have a son. I don’t have anyone.

The other soldiers shuffle around me, going about their business and ignoring the broken woman on the ground. Maxson’s firm grip on my shoulder is what brings me back to myself and I lurch away from his touch, standing and brushing loose strands of hair from my eyes.

“You look like you could use a drink,” he offers but I shake my head. No, a drunk stupor will only make this situation worse, will only add more confusion to my head, especially if shared with him.

“No,” I simply say and lose myself in the halls, leaving him behind, brushing the synth boy from my mind. I want to go back, return to a life where simplicity was easier to grasp. But I don’t know when that time was. When I was a wife? No, it wasn’t in that relic of a life. Simplicity was somewhere in this wasteland but perhaps I never had it. Perhaps there was always something, a weight that was always on my shoulders.

Simply surviving is the least complicated way to live, searching for my next meal, my next shelter, fighting, breathing, nothing more. But then again, I’ve never been a survivor, have I? That word makes no sense to me because there has never been a time where I have ‘survived’ and some part of me hadn’t died because of it.

No, there is no simplicity in my world, there is only the next looming mountain to climb, the next river to push through, struggling to not get dragged under.

Being a survivor is not my victory, it’s my downfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the extremely short chapter and late update. There was going to be a flashback here but I've had writer's block for it and I doubt I'll be able to finish it but I will not let that stop the rest of the story.


	7. Chapter 7

I close my eyes as the wind caresses my face, cool and relatively fresh, carrying the scent of the ocean. I sit on the wide balcony outside of the Prydwen, above Elder Maxson’s favourite place to stand and brood. I attempt to ignore the Prydwen’s loud engines and focus on the squawk of seagulls. 

I gaze out at the ravaged land, a place that I’ve become accustomed to calling home. The Annabel that stepped into Vault 111 with terror grasping her heart was not the same Annabel that stumbled out with rage clawing up her throat. I have walked lands plagued by nightmares, a sea of radiation and horrors, walked cracked roads that had once led to places but now lead nowhere beyond what someone is willing to search for in the rubble.

I became a soldier for the Brotherhood of Steel, but I could never be like the others. I had faults that I had to adapt. I couldn’t run blindly into battle in a suit of that wretched power armour, I had to apply my skills elsewhere. It’s why Maxson and many others always referred to me as a ghost, able to slip away into the darkness, able to kill without being near. I had to find my strengths within myself and become a completely different person to the pre-war relic that was often scoffed at in this world.

All of this comes down to a simple fact, the dreams I once had for a stable family, a clean home, can never come to pass. I am a killer, not a mother. I am a wanderer, not a wife. I am an utter mess, and can never hope to be a friend. I’ve accepted this. I accepted it the moment I turned that gun on Danse and left behind the last shreds of my former self. And now Maxson is asking me to do something that I can’t possibly. Become a mother, settle down like none of this ever happened, like I didn’t have a hand in destroying hundreds of people, like my gun isn’t moulded permanently into my palm.

I stand and move towards the railing that separates me from the drop to the water below. I lean into the wind, allowing it to embrace me. Here I stand, seemingly on the edge of the world with everything that I have tried to run from sitting at my back. Decisions loom before me, paths stretching and none of them are easy, none of them are even. All I have to do now is decide which pain I wish to endure. All I have to do now is decide which part of myself I can bear to sacrifice. It will never be an easy decision, it never has been.

⸸

I dust off my hat, grateful beyond measure to have my possessions back, like a part of myself has been returned.

A small knock on the door that’s slightly ajar has my heart leaping in my throat. Either it’s Maxson or someone else who wishes to pester me about choices and responsibilities. But I find myself welcoming them into the small space anyway, aware that I can’t hide forever.

The boy that pushes into the room isn’t who I expected and my mouth goes dry at the big silver eyes and mop of black hair. He wrings his hands, standing before me and shuffling his feet.

“Hi,” I say, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed.

“Umm,” he murmurs and I tilt my head, his unease seeming to emanate from him.

“Did Elder Maxson send you?” I question and his eyes meet mine. He hesitates for a moment before nodding. I let out a sigh and shift over on the bed, patting the space next to me and watch him approach with uneasy steps, the excitement from earlier that day gone from him. Perhaps I’m not what he expected, perhaps he thought I would sweep him into my arms and cry with joy. But I don’t know him and I don’t know what falsehoods have been planted into his head. “You like it here, don’t you?” I presume and watch his eyes light up.

“Arthur lets me help Proctor Ingram in the machinery rooms, he says one day I’ll be able to build my own power armour.” I laugh softly. Nate was a tinkerer, always fixing something on the old bike that he adored or making adjustments to the Mr Handy. 

“You want to be a soldier then?” I ask, leaning against the wall behind us as he shrugs.

“Arthur says I can choose my own path. He also says that I’ll have to go with you.” Some of that excitement fades and there’s mixed feelings in my stomach. He wants to stay here, he wants to stay with Maxson but he knows he has to come with me. I don’t even know what I would do with a kid. “I don’t want to go out into the wasteland,” he says quietly, staring at his shoes. “There are too many… monsters out there.”

“The monsters aren’t everywhere,” I flatly reassure him.

“Father said that I should never go to the surface, that it’s not safe.”

“Father…” I breathe, knowing who he speaks of with a sickness in my stomach. The real Shaun, the human that this synth is modelled after.

“That reminds me,” he says, jumping up and pulling something from his pocket. “I kept this with me everywhere I went in case I… ran into you. Father thought you would be at the Institute when it was destroyed, he told me that I should go with you but you weren’t there.”

“No,” I murmur, taking the holotape from his hands. “I wasn’t.” I look at the faded yellow square in my palm, contemplating what could possibly be on there. “Thank you,” I say and stuff it into a pocket of my leather jacket. He returns to his place beside me, swinging his legs and twisting his striped shirt in his hands. 

“I won’t be a bother,” he says quietly and I frown.

“I don’t think you are,” I say truthfully. No, not a bother, just in sever danger. If the people here find out he’s a synth then he’ll be killed but I’m the only one that knows, I’m the only one that seems to be able to protect him. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. “This place isn’t any safer than it is out there,” I say and he looks at me with raised brows. “The Brotherhood will always have enemies and some of those enemies aren’t going to like seeing a big ship floating in the sky. This place won’t be safe forever.”

“Then shouldn’t we help them?” I laugh and shake my head, looking up at the ceiling.

“The Brotherhood don’t want or need our help, kiddo. They dig their own graves. I have tried to help them but Maxson is bent on having things his way. There’s no helping a man like that.”

“Where will we go then?” he asks and I let out a sigh. Isn’t that the question of my life? Where to go, especially with a little synth boy following. He’ll either die here or I’ll keep him alive long enough to die in the wasteland.

“There are settlements that will help us,” I tell him, thinking of the place I left behind and the little boy that loves guns, other places too. “There’s also a whole world beyond the Commonwealth.” He seems to pale at that and I let out another breath. He’s reluctant to leave the Prydwen, I can’t imagine how reluctant he’d be to leave the Commonwealth. “I’ll figure something out, Shaun,” I murmur and squeeze his knee before standing, his name feeling like ash on my tongue. “Come on, let’s go find some Nuka Cola and comics.” A grin splits his face and I can’t help but smile back at him as he jumps up and leads the way.

The boy may be a synth, a twisted creation, and that holotape seems to burn a hole in my pocket, but Danse was a synth too. He was a man of honour, kindness, optimism, and loyalty. He didn’t know he was a synth, he thought he was human and he was loved by many, even Maxson. Why can’t Shaun be the same? Why can’t I accept that he may never truly be my son but he is still a boy frightened by monsters and clinging to his mother? Perhaps I can push aside my own monsters and accept he is just a lost little boy.


	8. Chapter 8

_“If you are hearing this, then whatever conflicts you and I have endured are over. I have no reason to believe that you’ll honour the request I’m about to make, but I feel compelled to try anyway. This synth, this… boy. He deserves more. He has been re-programmed to believe he is your son. It is my hope that you will take him with you. I would only ask that you give him a chance. A chance to be part of whatever future awaits the Commonwealth.”_

I hear those words in my dreams, hear them as I eat, sit, watch the clouds, breathe the warm air, shower. I hear them when I don’t want to, when I’m looking into the eyes of that little boy, the boy who thinks with all his heart that I am his mother, that I am the only thing he has in this forsaken world. My real son, the man who is dead, the man who had instilled fear in the hearts of many, loved his creations. I could never hold such a love. Each time I look into those silvery eyes, I’m reminded of everything that I lost, everything that I fought fruitlessly for, everything that could have been, everything that is not. And it’s in those moments that I have to learn how to breathe again, learn to see again, feel again. Feel beyond the pain and the nightmares.

So, I slowly teach myself how to look at the little boy without witnessing the horrors of my life all over again. He shows me his comics, his gimmicks, shows me the card tricks, the jokes, he shows me everything he has accomplished with the little months he’s been allowed to accomplish such things. He shows me all the human things but I have to remind myself, every moment I am with him, that this boy is a creation made by a man driven by the need for perfection in all things. I have to remind myself that he is not my son and I am not his mother, but I’ll look after him, I’ll take him from this place and give him the future the true Shaun wanted for him, it’s the least I can do for the son I lost. It’s the least I can do for the son that I killed.

I slide my fingers through his inky hair, watching the contrast of the darkness fall against his pale cheek. His black lashes flutter as he dreams but he stays asleep, head resting on my lap. It’s the most peaceful I’ve seen him in the past week, not running from one thing to another, not talking excitedly about a toaster he’s decided to dismantle.

I lift my gaze to the outside, the stars that shimmer in the sky, the looming shadows of crumbling Boston. Maxson’s brooding area has its appeals and sitting here without the loud chatter of soldiers or drills and hammering is almost calming, I can fool myself into thinking that everything isn’t wrong, that I’m still hopelessly in love with Maxson, that I hold my son in my arms, that Danse is somewhere making adjustments to his beloved armour.

I lean my head back on the cushions of the couch, letting out a breath and wondering where I go from here. There is a whole world for this boy to see, a messed up and destroyed world but it has beautiful parts, parts where nature has flourished, where the skeletons of cars mould themselves into the growth of this new world.

Footsteps in the echoing halls draw me from the few serene places in this world and I sit up, careful not to disturb the lightly snoring Shaun in my arms. I glance over my shoulder as a large figure steps into the shadows of the room and I instantly recognize the broad shoulders. I turn back to the expanse of glass and array of stars. His steps freeze and he doesn’t say a word. There’s little to say between us anymore, we’ve both accused each other, blamed each other, hated each other, loved each other, plotted, laughed, even danced. What more is there that could pass between us anymore?

“How’s Shaun?” he questions quietly, his reflection in the windows as he steps closer.

“He has nightmares,” I tell Maxson honestly, gaze wandering over the bones of Boston. “He doesn’t understand why the Institute was destroyed. I mean, he tries to, he reasons that he knows why but… he doesn’t understand why everyone had to die.”

“I didn’t know he had nightmares,” Maxson murmurs, moving to stand beside the sofa now and stiffly clasps his hands behind his back.

“Don’t we all?” I say absently, my eyes travelling to him. He has nightmares, he holds an impossible weight on his shoulders, one he should never have to bear so young. But he holds it with pride and it always pains me to see what the Commonwealth has carved of this man. If he were born in my time he would be different, he would hold smiles easier, relax more. But then again, in my time we never would have met. “I’ll take him with me,” I tell him and don’t miss the small intake of breath. “He deserves to see a life beyond war.”

“You are his mother, you know best.” I want to laugh at that, tell him how wrong he is, tell him that I don’t even know what’s best for myself. But I simply look to a world beyond this one, a land outside of that glass and continue to wonder where to go next.

“I can’t tell you that you’ll ever see us again.” He’s silent for the longest time, mulling over the best strategy to take in this conversation. But no matter what he says, I know that I have to leave the Brotherhood behind permanently, I know that I have to make a life for myself away from such struggles and a part of my heart already knows where to go.

“You showed me a different path, Annabel.” His voice is almost small as he speaks. “You showed me that things don’t have to be a certain way and I wish that I had listened to your insight long ago. I wish… I wish I could have seen a way to save Danse, save the innocents of the Institute and not been so brash.” His shoulders slump and his weaknesses are finally laid before him.

“You cannot change the past, Arthur,” I say, feeling a sadness well in my heart like a slow trickle of icy water. “I’m sorry things ended up this way.”

“I’m sorry too.” Silence descends upon us, full of unspoken words and broken promises. But our paths have diverged and I no longer want to be a soldier, I don’t want to continue digging graves while my own sits empty.

“I’ll leave in the morning.” I finally look at him again, seeing his blue gaze swimming with words he keeps behind pressed lips. I don’t want to hear those words, they’ll do nothing for the path I know I have to take. “Don’t find me.” The breath he lets out is pained and I keep mine in, I keep the pain lodged in my lungs, the heartbreak stuck beneath my tongue. It is useless, fruitless. It is destructive. Our love is destructive, it was never built to last. “Make this world a better place, Elder.” I look to the stars again, look to the hope that twinkles in the blackness of the night. “Make this place worth living for.”

⸸

I leave before I have to see him again, leave with Shaun’s hand clasped in mine and an iciness in my heart. We board the vertibird and travel the short distance down to the airport, then we walk. Hollow steps over cracked pavement, a boy and a woman, sharing the midnight hair and the starry eyes, hand in hand, into a wasteland of forgotten lives.

I don’t look back, it’s too easy to look back and see all the things I’m leaving behind. Looking back may complete the shattering of my heart and I need to be strong, I need to keep one foot in front of the other for the little boy that clings to my hand.

I know where I need to go, I know what roads I need to walk, and I know how to get there like I know my own name. I remember the wind in my short hair, the tug on my floral dress, I remember the roads that I travelled on my bike and I know how to get there. Once my own sanctuary, now a sanctuary to others that I sent there, a place I never could find the heart to return to. Sanctuary, my home, my dreams there bathed in fire and ash. But I can build there, I can make a life there. I _need_ to make a life there. I need to heal, to find myself.

I need to stop stumbling around, claiming it’s survival when all it’s doing is killing me. I need to live and I need to let this boy live.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have changed and added to the chapters beginning at chapter 9 so if the structure changes slightly then don't be too concerned. Quite a bit has been added now that I've finally figured out where I'm taking this story.

I cup his face in my palms, the skin warm beneath my trembling fingers. His stubble scratches my smooth skin, unscarred, clean. He looks at me with brown eyes swimming with love and I nearly sob.

“Nathan,” the name is a whimper on my lips, falling between us. “Nate, you’re here.”

“Of course I am, Annabel,” he chuckles, his voice warm, his eyes amused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought…” my words fall away, breaking like glass as tears well in my eyes.

 _I thought you were dead. For so long, I stumbled around without you, and now you’re here_.

“I love you,” I whisper, closing my eyes, feeling the pain within me again. But when I open them again, it’s not Nate looking at me, it’s not him at all. It’s another ghost, another grave I have dug. “Danse?”

“You betrayed me,” he accuses, his voice deep, cold and he wraps his large hands around my wrists. “You could have saved me, you could have stood up to him but you took the coward’s way out. You _killed_ me.”

“I’m sorry,” I weep, the guilt, the regret, the _hate_ filling me.

“You killed me and you _ran_.” His face is a mask of anger and the tears blur my vision. The pain of it all is too much

“You think you’re in pain now?” a different voice hisses and I blink the tears away to see Maxson, his calloused hands crawling up to my throat but it’s his words that send my heart into a wild beat, words that I have spoken, spat through gritted teeth to a man beneath the barrel of my rifle. I was a monster, I am a monster. “I can make you bleed, make you beg me for death.” His hands circle my throat, those blue eyes narrow in fury and he squeezes, crushes.

 

⸸

 

The cry that tears itself from my lungs is painful and I lurch up, looking around me with wild eyes, the campsite, the little boy still fast asleep. I let out a shaky breath, pressing my knuckles to my lips to keep the pathetic whimper inside of me.

Nightmares are nothing new, the guilt is an old wound inside of me that refuses to heal. I don’t deserve for it to heal, I don’t deserve any sort of peace when I have denied that from others.

I look to the moon, breathing deeply to settle my nerves. I am a monster, there is no redemption to be found for the things I have done, there is no reconciliation for the things I have seen.

A sigh leaves me and I run my fingers through my hair, gaze trailing to the patches of mangled grass around me. It’s time to make a new life, time to be someone else. No longer a pre-war wife or relic, no longer a soldier or a wanderer, Sanctuary will be my new beginning.

My eyes find Shaun, my leather jacket draped over him, his hands tucked beneath his chin.

A new beginning for both of us.

 

⸸

 

The mayor is the first to greet me as I walk towards the small settlement, my worn hat shielding my eyes from the sun. Shaun is at my side, a stream of questions leaving his lips that I attempt to answer as I study the stormy gaze that the mayor sends us.

“You’re not welcome here, Blue,” he spits. I keep my chin raised, my back straight.

“We’ll only be here a few nights, mayor,” I reassure him, keeping my tone soft, keeping the edge of anger from my voice as exhaustion claws at my back.

“No.” He turns his back on me and begins moving towards the gates of his prized settlement, eyes peeking over the walls and through the cracks in the steel.

“I’ll pay.” He stops then, freezes at the word as though the very idea of being paid keeps him planted to his spot. My hand absently grips Shaun’s shoulder, reassuring myself that he’s safe at my side.

“How?” the mayor asks over his shoulder and I grip my rifle.

“With my gun and my skill. I know that the encampment of Gunners near here has you tossing at night.” He turns then, suspicious eyes watching me closely.

“You’ll clear them out?” he asks slowly. “On your own?”

“Not on my own,” I say with a tilt of my head, already feeling nerves swirling around in my stomach. “I’ll have my guns and my wits.” He gives a sharp chuckle, a cruel smile twisting his lips.

“You’ll be walking to your death.” I feel Shaun stiffen beside me, but I keep my gaze on the mayor.

“Give me your word that this boy will be safe here and that he’ll have leave to stay here for as long as he needs if I clear out those raiders.” The mayor’s eyes flicker between mine, assessing my worth, judging my capabilities. He knows I have a good eye, knows that I didn’t come to this settlement with a golden spoon in my mouth. His jaw clenches and he waves a hand with a sigh.

“Fine,” he growls and moves towards his settlement again. “You have my word.”

 

⸸

 

The warm day is spent clearing the old trailer of the boxes that have been tossed in there again. Shaun puts his back into it, eager to be doing something other than mindlessly walking and following me. He hums an old-world tune, his shirt streaked with dirt and amongst the supplies I search for anything of value. Of course, there’s nothing of actual value but Shaun manages to find a toaster that he quickly dissects for parts. I do the same with a fan and we quickly fall into a rhythm of tinkering and neatening.

My mind keeps shifting back to my task ahead, the daunting and suicidal task. I should have left him with Arthur, I shouldn’t have taken him out here into a world far too large for him to truly ever grasp. Especially as a synth, especially if I won’t be there to shield him.

The Gunners are not a group of people I usually like to cross paths with. Battle-hardened, vicious, with minds not clogged by the drug heavy hazes that raiders adopt. Usually people don’t look for a fight with them, but I am and I know it’s a task I may not walk away from.

Perhaps that’s why I decided to take it, perhaps the prospect of finally dying in battle appeals to me. Shaun will be safe here, for a time. And I… I might have the end I’ve been searching for.

I study my pip-boy, scrolling through the map until I find the place not too far from where I currently am. Mass Pike Interchange, an interchange between two elevated freeways, one heading north-south and one east-west, now an outpost for a group of Gunners in the freeway’s ruins.

“What you’re doing is dangerous, isn’t it?” Shaun asks, his voice small and I glance at him, his eyes already on me. He sits with a screwdriver in his small fist, a clock half dismantled in his lap. “You don’t know if you’ll come back.”

“The Gunners are dangerous,” I tell him quietly, averting my eyes and twisting the knobs on the pip-boy.

“That doesn’t mean you have to… get rid of them alone.”

“There’s no one else who will help me, Shaun,” I say, rubbing my temple. “I’ve gone through worse.” I feel his eyes on me as I say this, as I remember crawling from the cold clasps of the vault, as I remember the heavy and unfamiliar weight of the gun in my grip. I remember the months of being beaten and broken, of learning to fight and survive in this hellish world, only being able to push through because of my love and my sheer hate. But I have neither of those things anymore, my true son dead, the Institute destroyed.

What is there to fight for anymore with the embers of my hate dwindling to cold coals?

“If it’s my time, Shaun, then there’s nothing I can do to avoid it.” I hear him shuffle closer, moving through the clutter around us until he sits before me and grabs my hands tightly. He’s silent until I look at him, our steely gazes meeting.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” he says quietly, his words seeming uncertain, spoken from trembling lips, “but there’s more to fight for in this world. People need you.” I begin shaking my head, but he tugs on my hand, a frown forming between his dark brows. “When I was with Father, with the Institute, I always heard of stories of the Sole Survivor, a woman who carved a path for herself in the Commonwealth and saved people along the way. Concord, Cambridge, the vaults, even Diamond City desperately needed your help. You _did_ that. You did it without ulterior motives, without greed in your heart and you’re still doing that.” I listen to him with wide eyes, remembering the pain of those places, the broken woman that fell into the traps of helping people and receiving a knife in the back for it.

But sometimes I didn’t receive a knife in the back. The small group of people I sent to the ghost that is Sanctuary offered me a smile and supplies from their already near empty hands. Danse didn’t stab me in the back, he gave me something to fight for beyond my own pain. He gave me the skills I needed to find my son and he did it with a glint of pride in his eyes.

There have been others, farms and homesteads, even this settlement, travellers on the road, all looking for someone to save them from their oppressive darkness and I managed to push through my own darkness to guide them.

I lower my gaze from Shaun’s, lashes damp with unshed tears. I have a task to do, a promise to keep. Perhaps this will be my last kindness to this world. Securing Shaun and this settlement a safe and calm moment in time where they can relax and build themselves.

“I will fight to my dying breath.”


	10. Chapter 10

The cold of the night crawls up my spine as I adjust my grip on my rifle, peering down my scope and squinting through the darkness. I see the fires in the distance, shadows shifting in the light. Not as many of them crawl in the darkness of the night, most settled down for the night.

I inspect the elevators that will take me to the highway, noticing the northern one doesn’t lead into the centre of their outpost. A single guard in a chair by it, his face lit by the glow of a cigarette. A couple more Gunners reside below the highway on guard posts, but it’ll be easy to take them out quickly and quietly.

I continue looking at the highway, my muscles stiff from being laid amongst this rubble and weeds for most of the day and night, waiting for my opportunity.

I stretch my back, pulling my aching cheek and jaw from the stock of the rifle and blowing a strand of black hair from my eyes.

It’s now or never and I have a promise to keep.

I take a deep breath, steadying my heart, burying the nerves deep down. I focus, check my gear, place my hat on the ground with a small satchel of supplies, then stand and move through the shadows, little more than a breeze, a shuffle of dirt.

I sling my rifle over my shoulder and pull my lethal blade from its place on my hip, keeping one foot steady in front of the other as I keep my sights on the Gunners before me. I advance towards the first guard post, my worn boots finding purchase around gravel and sticks.

A ghost to these people, a whisper as I quietly and quickly wrap a hand around a mouth and open a throat, a soft gurgle the only noise that escapes the man. I gently lower them to the ground as they die, careful not to even make a rustle of their deep green clothing.

I flick the thick blood from my blade and move on to the next guard post, my feet not even creaking on the wooden stairs as I repeat the same movements.

The last man is the one puffing on a cigarette, half dozing beneath the light of the moon. I’m quick to open his throat too then step onto the elevator, letting out a small breath. I crouch low in the shadows and ascend to the looming and crumbing roads above, feeling my heart beating hard against my ribs.

The elevator trembles to a stop and I quickly exit, slipping into shadows and holding my knife in a steady grip. The camp is silent, only the crackle of fire in the air. My steps are careful as I traverse over littered cans, rubble, pieces of metal, and discarded rubbish.

I come upon the first sleeping person that I sink my blade into, gripping them as they thrash for a moment before they die. The next man stands, overlooking the land before him, peering into the night as a light rain begins to fall, mist rolling over the rubble. He spits over the edge as I advance upon him, keeping low. But he turns at the last moment and my breath halts.

He doesn’t see me at first as I stand still, blending into the shadows and his eyes pass right over me before he turns back to the edge.

I begin moving again, closer to him, my hand gripping my blade and bringing it up, prepared to spring. There’s a flash of lightning, throwing a hazy blue light over the land, illuminating the skeletal trees and husks of cars, illuminating me.

There’s a shout and the shot of a gun. The bullet pings into the metal barrel beside me and the man before me turns, bringing up his gun but I’m leaping at him, sinking my boot into his gut and sending him flying off the edge of the highway. His scream awakens the rest of the camp and suddenly there’s gunfire all around me and I’m diving behind a moth-eaten couch, scrambling to grab hold of my rifle.

I duck my head as the bullets hit everything around me, bits of foam and dust rising into the air. I reach to my belt, unclipping the flash grenade before tossing it over the couch. I close my eyes, hearing the bang of the grenade that has people shouting.

I hoist my rifle up, resting it on the couch and leaning into the stock, taking sight of the stumbling soldiers. Then I begin to pick them off as they desperately search for cover, their bodies jolting with rifle fire, guns clattering to the ground and blood splattering against the old stone.

It’s always been far too easy to kill in this world.

Movement ceases, only the occasional pained moan fills the air. I straighten, eyes scouring the place, searching for a knife in the shadows. There’s a creak behind me and I turn quickly, raising my gun but the weapon is torn from my grip and a blow to my gut sends me tumbling over the couch, landing on the other side with loud gasps. I wrap my arms around my stomach, hearing the hiss and stomp of the power armour coming closer. Bile rises and I wretch, my stomach feeling like acid liquid, ribs like shards of glass beneath my skin.

A thick, metal hand grips the front of my leather jacket, hoisting me up and I’m crying with the pain, the blazing red that spreads through me like a fire. But I see Danse’s eyes, wide and almost fearful as he faces down his inevitable death.

I was too weak to fight for him.

The knife is in my grip before I can register what I’m doing, knowing these power armours inside and out, having taken a repairing hand to them far too many times. My hand is destructive now as I thrust the blade into joints and wires in the helmet, hearing the crazed screech as the helmet smokes and sizzles.

I’m dropped to the ground and I roll away, crawling for my rifle. There’s a hiss and clatter as the helmet is thrown to the ground. My fingers stretch for the rifle, the worn strap within my reach.

There’s a boot to my gut and my body splits in two and I scream, tears trailing into my hair as I roll onto my back, unable to draw breath, lungs faltering. I look up at the man in the power armour through a blurred vision. He rears back, and I curl in on myself, preparing for the blow.

With another scream, another whimper, I’m sliding along the stone slab and then lurching, the ground falling away.

I scramble and claw, hands finding twisting rods of metal at my legs dangle, that drop below like the mouth of some horrible monster. Rain wets my cheeks, sticking my hair to my forehead as I try weakly to pull myself up.

The man rises above me, a looming figure of shadowed joints and dripping blood. The side of his face is raw and bloody where the helmet marked him, and I take small satisfaction in that.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man asks, my muscles quivering as I continue to cling to the cold steel of the broken freeway.

“No one,” I manage through gritted teeth, his gaze narrowing. I look at him, memorising his scarred features, memorising this moment so I can relive it, remind myself of what I can do when I find myself weak and alone in the dead of night.

They all underestimated how far a mother would go for a child. Now they underestimate a woman who has nothing except for the melting steel in her heart.

He reaches for a knife at his back and I take a deep breath, the rain soaking through my skin, winding ice into my bones like vines.

His cruel grin is the last thing I see of him.

The gun at my thigh is in my hand before he can move, the shot splitting his skull in a gush of blood and gore. I hug the freeway as his body buckles, tilting forward and stumbling over me. I close my eyes, embracing that ice in my heart as the body hits the ground with a sickening thud that can be heard for miles.

I heave myself up onto the freeway, rolling onto my back, holding the gun in a loose grip. I feel nothing. There is blood around me, the slow rot of bodies already beginning, waiting for some creature to feast on them. Yet I feel nothing.

There was a time when this mother would have wept for the blood on her hands. But not this woman, a woman with nothing but a name that will soon be dust. And that’s just fine with me.

 

⸸

 

I limp into the settlement, eyes watching each of my movements. Even with the pain, the bruises and the blood, I still manage to keep my head up, still manage to look the mayor in the eye. He doesn’t argue when I go to their doctor and use their supplies free of charge. He has the same wariness about him that everyone has, that I am more than just a woman with a rifle and a cold gaze.

I don’t offer an explanation, they know that the Gunners are dead, that their outpost is now a feeding ground for ravenous birds. If the story isn’t in my haunted gaze, then they can easily see it in the streaks of blood that stain my clothes.

All for a few days of relative safety until I can find out where this path is leading. There’s more out there in the world and this isn’t the only settlement that needs help. I’ve seen it. The broken, the damned, the tormented. I am not the only one suffering. My story doesn’t matter but that doesn’t mean I can’t kill for others, can ruin myself to make sure that Shaun is safe. I am willing to die for others it seems.

 

⸸

 

The first thought that passes through my head when Sanctuary comes into sight is that the bridge over the shallow stream is in dire need of repair, the wood rotting and crumbling into the water. The next thing that I notice is that the stream needs to be cleared. Then I let out a deep groan because I know that if this is to be my new home then those repairs will have to be made by me. Clearly the group of stragglers that made it here have not had the will to make this place a home.

I carefully pick my way over the boards of the ruined bridge, Shaun following closely behind me. This can be my new beginning, where I find myself again.

I squint my gaze, hands curling around the rifle that has become a far too familiar weight to me. Someone comes into view across the bridge, own rifle at the ready. But I see his hat, his coat and know instantly who he is. Preston Garvey, someone that I seemed to meet so long ago when this world was a whirlwind of noise and chaos. I suppose it’s a good thing that the people I saved so long ago from Concord are still kicking. The utter terror I went through to save them was not felt for nothing.

“Annabel?” Preston asks when he gets close enough and I feel Shaun’s small fists twist in the back of my leather jacket as I lower my rifle and give a hesitant wave. “I thought the wasteland had chewed you up,” he says with a small chuckle as I stop at the end of the bridge but I don’t share his mirth. The wasteland destroyed me and he doesn’t even know the start of it, none of the people here do.

I check the safety on my gun before slinging the strap over my shoulder and meeting his dark gaze in the light of dusk.

“I thought it was time to come back home.” He smiles then with a nod of his head but the word fills like ash on my tongue. Home. What can I even consider home anymore?

“Well, are you gonna show her around or what?” The voice comes from a man in filthy overalls that sends my heart thumping in a sickening way but I push down that inane urge for cleanliness and nod my head in greeting at Sturges who wears a large grin on his face.

“We could really use your help making this place a bit more appealing to the eye,” Preston says with a hopeful glint in his dark eyes but Sturges lets out a sigh.

“She just got here, try not to load her with work just yet.”

“It’s alright,” I interrupt, wanting to work, wanting to focus on something other than everything I’ve left behind in the dust of the wasteland.

“Who’s this little fella?” Sturges questions, kneeling a ways before us, seeming to understand not to get too close, not until this wildness within me has settled down. I clasp Shaun’s hand in mine and look down at him, silver clashing with silver.

A new life. A new beginning. Something to build in this broken place. Make myself something. For this little boy, for this creation, the only thing left of a life I watched burn.

“This is Shaun,” I tell them, turning to them and seeing the others of their group approaching. The Minutemen in Sanctuary. The new and the old, finally coming together. “He’s my son.”


	11. Chapter 11

I nudge the limp arm with my blood speckled boot. It flops to the side, thumping to the damp cement and the head lolls next, blood oozing around it from the hole straight through the skull. I let out a breath, fog rising through the scratchy scarf wrapped around the lower half of my face.

I glance around me, eyes wary, searching, always searching. There’s a sharp wind, sending flurries of snow through the air that refuse to stick to the ground. Stubborn weather, it can’t seem to decide whether the world is still destroyed or finally healing.

I continue walking forward, clomping hooves following behind me. The jangle of items filling the silence of this desolate road where gunshots were just echoing through the air. Raiders still don’t seem to learn that I own this road that leads to Bunker Hill, travel it so much that even the animals seem to know to stay out of my path.

I peel back my glove to look at the ink written on my wrist. A reminder. _Telephone_. A small smile lifts my lips. Shaun and his gadgets. I adjust my gloves, neatening the cuffs of my leather jacket before looking forward again, towards Bunker Hill and the ruins of Boston.

There’s always a strange twist in my heart as I near Boston, a small part of me hoping to have a chance encounter with the man my heart still throbs for but I know it won’t happen. The Brotherhood may still be here but they are busy. Killing synths and mutants, setting up safe buildings for those struggling to move to, and breathing down my neck as I do the same thing. As I build settlements, farms, soldiers. I may not be in direct opposition of the Brotherhood of Steel but I will not let them trample the good people of the Commonwealth.

It’s only taken six months to rebuild the Minutemen, to build a force, to become someone new. No one even knows that I was part of the Brotherhood, that I’m a pre-war relic, that I was married, or once in love with Elder Maxson. Only those in the Brotherhood who cared to know and I steer clear of that utter chaos.

The Brotherhood haven’t yet come down upon us but I know that time will come, we’ll butt heads and it won’t be a pretty reunion. I’ll have to face my fears of the steel soldiers and tell them what the Commonwealth really needs. An oppressing force that doesn’t even take the time or the consideration to save innocents is not what these people need.

Perhaps the Brotherhood could have truly made this place better, started to rebuild what truly mattered; hope. But they haven’t. They use fear to feed their soldiers, they use might to keep people in line. They steal and tell people it’s for their safety. That is not the order I want to live under. So I’ve created my own.

I tip the rim of my hat up, the tattered hat I used to wear replaced with the iconic general hat that Preston seems to worship. I refused the duster, feeling as though I was playing dress-up and knowing it isn’t necessary. Maxson wears his battle-coat, it isn’t a claim for anything but everyone knows he is the leader. So, I wear my leather jacket and tight jeans with my rifle slung over my shoulder and stark black hair in a braid.

I never wanted to be a leader, I wasn’t trained at birth, I don’t know the first thing about directing people but I’m learning and eyes look to me for guidance and that pressure on my shoulders pushes down harder every time I try to resist that responsibility. So, I don’t, I bear it. Just as Maxson does. And I know with certainty that being a leader with so many people looking at you is no excuse to do the wrong thing. I know now that Maxson could have listened to me.

 

⸸

 

Bunker Hill is a trading post that is cluttered, stinks, and holds a number of different types of people. It’s not a place I like to stay for too long but they have valuable supplies that I need and I have things that they need. With the weather growing cold fast, people are unprepared. Not enough food or clothing. I’m not sure if the Commonwealth has seen a proper winter in over 200 years. I feel like I’m the only one that knows what’s truly to come. A walking encyclopedia for the world that was before the bombs. Vast knowledge that no one gives a shit about until they’re freezing to death.

I do what I can for the people, their trust growing with each good deed the Minutemen do, with each settlement we build, and each fighter we take into The Castle.

“Didn’t see you here last week, Blue,” Joe comments, a stocky, balding man with yellowing teeth and a constant sneer on his chapped lips.

“I was busy clearing ghouls from some old tunnels,” I tell him, shifting through my pack for some supplies to trade. “They were scaring the cattle nearby.”

“You’d think you could send one of your many soldiers to do that work. You’ve got ‘em all eating out of your palm already.” My hands pause in the satchel and I look up at him.

“I don’t need people to fight for me,” I tell him calmly. “Don’t forget what I’ve done for this place.”

“Right, right,” he mutters with a wave of his hand. “We all know you’re a capable leader and an even more capable woman.”

“Good,” I say with a tilt of my head. “Now, let’s get this trade over with.” He grumbles something under his breath that I don’t bother paying attention to, knowing it’s something about being a woman in charge and that he clearly thinks I’m not capable.

Go ahead, I want to spit, underestimate me. Just like the Institute, just like the Railroad, just like the Brotherhood. I have more blood on my hands than anyone in this damn place. I just hide it beneath worn gloves.

 

⸸

 

The way back is swifter. It always is. I have a lighter load and am in better spirits to be heading home. It’s colder though, a frigidness in the air that insists on seeping into my bones. I huddle further into my jacket and keep pushing forward.

Until the gunshots stop my tracks.

Concord. I could cut around but if there are Raiders then they’re too close to Sanctuary, too close to the other settlements and the trade routes.

I let out a sigh and march for Concord, no fear curling in my gut, no terror. It’s as though an immortality has sunk into my bones. Being alive for over 200 years and avoiding death too many times to count seems to have let me relax when faced with a gun or a knife to the throat. It doesn’t faze me and death doesn’t scare me. There’s not much more in this world for me, death won’t come too soon.

I leave the Brahmin in a safe spot before scaling a building, my breath fogging in the air, my eyes watering from the freezing breeze as flurries of snow fall from the sky and begin to stick to the rooftops. Winter has finally decided to arrive after so long of being asleep. The bombs seemed to burn away any hope for the cold. But here it is, persevering where everything else is struggling to survive. Just another glimmer of hope for this world to be reborn once again.

My eyes scour the streets below me, searching for those letting loose volleys of bullets and my gaze doesn’t fail me. The ice in my lungs seems to sharpen as I see that tell-tale armour, the shouts of formation. The Brotherhood of Steel have decided to step foot in my territory.

I pull out my rifle, rest the barrel on the ledge of the roof and put my eye to the scope, scanning the area. Not just the Brotherhood, synths too. Their laser weapons blasting the joints from power armour and sending soldiers to the ground. My sight finds the vertibird they landed on, smoking and in dire need of repair but they’re pinned down, being overwhelmed by the synths relentlessly tearing through them.

I owe them nothing. I owe them absolutely nothing. After all they’ve done to me, the destruction they’ve left within me, I should leave them to die, they’d do nothing more for me.

I rest my forehead against the stock of the gun, breathing deeply. They are not my people. They ruined me. I press my head harder to the wood and grit my teeth. I have a kid to get back to, things to do, they’re not worth it.

I look up, my stomach twisting before I switch the safety off, look through the scope and take the first shot that seals my fate in this damn fight. The first bullet tears through the head of a synth bearing down on a soldier, the next takes the gun from the arms of another. Then the soldiers are pushing the advantage as I continue to kill the creations that my son made.


	12. Chapter 12

I debate whether to go down there or not, whether to show them who I am. I brush a snowflake from the general hat and know what I need to do as a leader. I’m tired of being that scared woman who runs from her past.

I walk with my head up to the soldiers in the streets, trying to find cover and heal the wounded before another attack befalls them.

I walk with my rifle drawn and my steps sure.

I walk like the general I am.

“Civilian, step back,” one of the soldiers call but I keep that steel that they taught me in my blood.

“I should tell you the same thing, soldier. You’re in my territory.” The soldiers pass glances between them, looking both concerned and amused.

“We were following the synths. I believe you should be thanking us for clearing them out for you, if this is your land.”

“Actually, what I saw from the rooftops were a few disorderly soldiers with suits of power armour with joints that can’t stand the cold. Careful now, boys, don’t want those shiny suits to rust and take away all your power.” The soldiers stand straighter, now taking in the rifle and where I came from, clearly putting the pieces together and knowing that I saved their asses. “General of the Minutemen, glad to be of service.” I give a lazy salute before turning away, hoping that they understand that it’s time they left before a Minutemen patrol decides to open fire upon them.

“Annabel.” I freeze at the name, at the voice, the chills that run down my spine, the squeeze of my heart. I turn slowly, hoping I won’t see the ghosts of my heart, hoping that I’ve finally gone insane and imagined the voice but insanity refuses to take me because there he stands. Alive and breathing the icy air, marching forward. “My men should be thanking you,” he scolds darkly, his eyes pools of dark water.

“I’m sure anyone would have done something similar, Elder Maxson.” He just laughs, giving a shake of his head. I don’t even believe my own words. The Brotherhood is not often liked, I doubt anyone would risk their lives to help them. Except for me. Repeatedly.

“I hear you’re a general now,” he says, raising his brows. His men move to work around him, repairing equipment or those injured and it’s like it’s just the two of us, in a whirlwind of the world around us but standing still, the only still things in the entire world. I tilt my head forward, showing him the hat with the Minutemen emblem on it.

“Indeed. I thought I’d better make something out of myself.”

“You were always someone, Annabel,” he says softly and the softness tugs at my heart like nothing else can.

“Let’s keep this professional, Elder Maxson,” I tell him with a voice of stone. I will not let him in again, never again. I am a woman who learns from her past.

“Of course, General,” he replies, the warmth seeping from his tone and he clasps his hands behind him. My skin prickles strangely but I plant my hands firmly on my hips.

“This is hardly the place for a discussion, Elder. If you wish to negotiate territories then you may arrange a meeting with me.” His eyes narrow, darkening his gaze further.

“Territories? The Brotherhood liberated this land, there is no discussion to be had.” I tilt my head, assessing him and willing myself to stay strong beneath his fierce gaze. I return my own steely gaze and refuse to back down from this hulking man.

“I doubt there would be much of a Brotherhood left if it weren’t for my aid.” A muscle in his jaw tightens and he holds his tongue. He knows it’s true. Without me the Institute would still be standing, without me they would have easily pierced his ranks and crippled his control. Without me he would be nothing to the people here. “So, if you wish to discuss the terms of the Commonwealth then feel free to organise a meeting. Meanwhile, stay out of my land.” I turn and begin walking again, my boots a whisper on the concrete.

“You don’t wish to make an enemy of the Brotherhood, Annabel.” There is restrained anger in his tone so I return a bite of my own.

“And you don’t wish to make an enemy of the Minutemen, Arthur.”

 

⸸

 

“That man terrifies me,” Preston says with a shudder as I relay my talk with Elder Maxson, a fire crackling between us and the chatter of our soldiers and other people still awake around us. Sanctuary never truly sleeps, there’s always something to do, a turret to fix, parameters to walk, missing child to find.

“He needs to learn his place,” I say with a sigh, gloved fingers rubbing at my aching temples. “He needs to learn that not everyone in the Commonwealth is someone that he can use as a stepping stone for more power and control. I won’t let him, not anymore.”

“Still,” Preston grumbles, the fire flickering upon his dark skin. “I’d like to personally avoid him as much as possible.” A smile tugs at my lips as his eyes dart around, as though the man himself might come up behind him and wrap his hands around his throat. We have guards for a reason.

“Maxson isn’t the bogeyman of the wastes, Preston,” I chuckle softly then sigh again, seeing the long road before us, the struggle for peace and unity. “He is a man that desires power, and like all men such as him, he needs a humbling.”

“I suppose you’ll be the one to give him that humbling,” he murmurs, sinking further into his large coat as an icy breeze sends flurries of sparks into the air.

“For now, I believe our main focus should be this pressing winter.” I look up to the sky, dark clouds covering the stars. I wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up tomorrow to find the entire settlement buried beneath snow. Stranger things have happened. Such as me still being alive. “The people of the wastes have not had a winter like this in a long time. There’ll be shortages in food, clothes, blankets. The raiders will either hide to conserve their strength and numbers or will attack blindly and desperately for our supplies.” Preston watches me speak, nodding along. There have been winters, cold and harsh but never so sever, never putting so many people and crops at risk. “I should have prepared for this earlier.”

“All we can do is try our best,” he says at an attempt at reassurance, but I shake my head.

“Our best might not be enough. We cannot risk people turning on us, turning to the Brotherhood in desperation because no doubt Maxson will try to use this to be a valiant hero.”

“What do you suggest?” he asks. Always looking to me, always eager for my orders. I glance around me at the patchwork homes, some with only sheets covering the holes of windows. Not enough time. I didn’t have enough time to prepare for this.

“Some of our settlements are more open and unguarded than others. We cannot move everyone to the Castle or those other settlements with good shelter. Sanctuary might not survive.” I’m silent for a long moment and Preston continues to watch me closely, studying my features as though he sees his last hope within them.

I look to my pip-boy, a ray of light within the darkness as I fiddle with the buttons and study the map of all the places I’ve discovered and marked. Too many, far too many. I’ve explored too much of these wastes but this is my home and the people here still need my help, venturing outside of the Commonwealth will not be an option until I know I can leave this place behind in peace.

“We go to the bunkers,” I say quietly and Preston raises a brow.

“What?”

“The army bunkers,” I continue, sitting up, now able to see it. “Defendable, sheltered, warm and able to withstand a hell of a lot of firepower. We have the people to defend it and we still have time.”

“Some of those old places are crawling with nasties though,” he points out as I look at him, hope blooming in my chest. I flash him my teeth in the attempts of a smile.

“Some, perhaps. But I’ve cleared out most in my travels, sheer boredom making me explore them. Most of them still have valuable supplies.”

“I don’t know about leaving Sanctuary just sitting here, undefended.”

“We have little other choice. It’ll just be for the winter and maybe a permanent residence in those places to keep them ready for winters to come. We will figure more out later but we cannot risk our people’s lives and loyalty so early on in this fight.” Preston scrubs his face with his hands as I watch him, willing him to tell me that this is a good idea, that I’m not just marching us all to our deaths.

“We’re going to need our people to stand against the might of the Brotherhood,” he says, more to himself than me as he glances around Sanctuary, the place that is home to him and so many other people. “Fine. This could work.” I flash those teeth again, the smile nothing like a general’s should be but of a fighter. Fight through the winter, fight the Brotherhood, peace and prosperity across the wastes. Better than laying down and hoping for death. Most of the time anyway.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, hiatus much. I'm so sorry for those who were really getting into this fic and I just dropped off the face of the earth. I started focusing a lot on my original book, Venator, which can be found over on my Wattpad (linked in my profile).
> 
> If you're an older reader then you should know that I added content into chapter 9 and 10 and if you wanted to read that then you should. Apart from that, I'm hoping to get a bit more written on this now that I have an actual idea of where I'm taking the story and characters. Fingers crossed for never having writer's block again.

“It was only a matter of time,” I mutter to Preston as he stands beside me, his laser rifle held in a tight grip.

“What’s his obsession with you?” he asks, irritation in his tone and I turn my silvery gaze to him.

“Let me deal with this, Preston. Continue helping the others.” He hesitates for a moment, eyes on the vertibirds moving swiftly towards us. Then he nods and moves away towards the heaps of crates and boxes being loaded into the single truck Sturges and I managed to get working. It took a couple of sleepless weeks, but we needed a way to move some of our supplies to the bunkers. It was never going to be an easy road to take but I’m hoping it’ll be worth it.

I straighten my shoulders as a vertibird lands on the empty street, kicking up dust and causing snowflakes to whirl crazily. I watch as the armoured soldiers jump from the bird, clutching their weapons in steel hands. Then comes the Elder, more imposing in his simple battle-coat that ripples in the wind than those steel soldiers beside him. How a single man can command such a presence will always awe and infuriate me.

He runs his fingers through his dark hair before approaching, his soldiers staying close, some of my soldiers moving closer to my sides. I widen my stance, crossing my arms over my chest and cut him with a scathing look. Unmovable, undeterred, _that_ is how a leader garners the loyalty they need to strive, something I learned in only a moment of seeing Elder Maxson. He doesn’t need to be wielding a weapon or strutting around in power armour, there’s a fierceness about him that makes weaker men tremble.

Perhaps I would be trembling too if I hadn’t seen the softer side of him, felt his lips against my skin, gentle fingers tracing old scars.

I shake myself from those thoughts, lowering my arms for one hand to rest against the gun strapped to my thigh. Maxson’s light eyes follow the movement, lips pressing together.

“Elder Maxson,” I greet, my voice loud enough for all of Sanctuary to hear, to know that I will be the one controlling this negotiation, that I am not afraid of this man or his stone-faced soldiers. I was once one of them, though not many people know that fact, I know how this game is played.

“General,” he replies, a bite to his tone that has my lip curling in quiet amusement.

“What brings you to my part of this small world?”

“I thought we should talk.” I hum in response, studying the stiff set to his shoulders, the way a muscle in his jaw flutters. I turn on my heel, keeping a steady hand on the handle of my pistol.

“This way, Elder.” I begin walking, boots crunching on scattered rocks and splashing through puddles of melted snow in the afternoon sun. There’s a long pause before I hear him follow, his steel soldiers thudding along as well.

I meet the gazes of my people, offering them a reassuring nod and a steady gaze, playing the part of the leader that they need me to be. So many people have flocked to the Minutemen’s flag, seeking refuge beneath the blue banner of stars and lightning. A symbol of hope in all this hopelessness. Even with the Institute crumbling stone and whispering ash, the dangers of this land still persist, and I’ll be damned if I let more innocents die.

I step into the shabby house that I once called my home, now crudely boarded up and barely swept, it resembles nothing of a home. Moth eaten couches, a desk and chair littered with papers and books. It’s an office, a temporary station for my ideas to be scrawled on paper, only to be tossed to the dirtied floor.

I indicate my soldiers to stay outside and Maxson follows my lead. I close the rusted door behind him, feeling the tension curl around us like the scorching heat of summer. Maxson studies the area, moving towards my desk strewn with all my half-formed ideas of survival and efficiency.

I slip past him and lean my hip against that desk, effectively blocking his inquisitive sight from the plans of the Minutemen, my plans. I cross my ankles, hands gripping the edge of the desk, watching him try to assert some control of the situation, nervous hands adjusting the lapels of his worn, chocolate brown coat.

“Well?” I push, not wanting him to be comfortable, not wanting him to feel in control of this situation. He came _here_ , this is my domain.

“I wish to make a deal with you,” he begins, clearing his throat and finally looking at me with those startling blue eyes, eyes that don’t fit the sharp angles of his face or the jagged scar crawling up his cheek.

“Oh?” I ask with a tilt of my head, both shocked and annoyed by this offer though I don’t dare show either emotion on my face. I expected him to want to crush the Minutemen, anything to secure his unquestioned rule in the Commonwealth. Destroy us as he did the Institute. That familiar rage rises in my gut, but I swallow it.

“You’re becoming quite the formidable organisation,” he continues, words measured, polite, careful to make certain that this negotiation will go his way. “Your name can be heard all across the Commonwealth.” My grip on the desk tightens and I fear that the wood will crack soon. “It’s causing a problem.”

“Of course it is.” His eyes flash, clearly hearing the sarcasm and ready defiance in my tone. I don’t answer to this man anymore and I don’t believe there was ever a time that I truly did. He followed _me_.

“The settlements you have so _graciously_ liberated refuse to provide provisions to the Brotherhood,” he spits, that cool exterior quickly falling away to reveal the man that I know so well, the one that throws a tantrum before he can even get a grasp of what he wants to say.

“That’s no fault of mine. If people want to feed your soldiers, then they will. If they wish to stand up for what they believe in, then they will. You can’t _control_ people.”

“The Brotherhood protects the people of the Commonwealth,” he growls, stepping forward, leaning over me with a menacing glint in his gaze. “We can’t very well do that if my soldiers aren’t fed.”

“Then grow some crops.” I shove past him, moving for the door, knowing this will only end in a screaming match between us. There is no arguing with the man and I will not take away choice from my people like he does to everyone around him. I have no qualms with farms aiding the Brotherhood if they wish but if they choose not to then that’s their business. “I think it’s time for you to leave.” I turn to him, only to find him studying the desk before him.

“‘ _The Castle_ ’?” he asks and my hands clench into fists, fury rising.

“That is none of your business, Elder,” I say, my tone low, my fingers itching to grip my gun.

“Fort Independence was overrun by an abundance of Mirelurks years ago and the Minutemen of that time abandoned it,” he says, facing me, telling me things I already know. “You have no hope of taking it back.”

“You clearly don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand what _you_ think you’re capable of. I’m beginning to understand that letting you have your fun with this stupid notion of a civilian militia was a mistake.” He’s stepping closer again, the rage in his gaze making my heart stutter. Never has he directed such rage at me, not until… not until my disobedience with Danse when I hesitated with my finger on the trigger. Now I wish I had the nerve to hold a gun in my grip, to put it between Maxson and I, to have that barrier.

“It is you who drove me to this path, you who forced my hand.”

“I did no such thing. You’re the one who abandoned me.” There’s hurt there, a wound that hasn’t quite healed in either of us. But I will not be drawn back into his fire.

“Abandoned you? You destroyed me.”

“You destroyed _me_ ,” he snarls back, getting far too close, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body, see the slight tremble in his clenched fists. “I nearly sacrificed everything for you.”

“But you _didn’t_ ,” I sneer. “You cling to your pride and stubbornness as you always do. You put yourself first, above the lives of innocent people that were in the Institute. This is who you are, and I _hate_ you for it.”

“You don’t hate me,” he says steadily. I look him in the eye, stare with a fiery gaze as my heart burns, as this rage and suffering claws at my throat.

“Watch me,” I snarl and turn away from him, giving him my back. I reach for the door, wanting to reach for my gun but settling on this instead.

His hand wraps around my upper arm, a growl coming from somewhere deep in his chest as he drags me to him, crushing me against his chest and slamming his lips against mine. It’s a painful display of passion and hate. I dig my fingers into his shoulders, wanting to claw into his skin and scar him forever, scar him as he has scarred me.

But I don’t fight him as I should because he is the one thing I know anymore in this world of the unknown.

The kiss softens, his lips slanting across mine. His arms circle my waist, pressing our bodies together even with the thick layers of clothing separating us. He sucks at my lower lip before I push forward, demanding more of him. Tongue and teeth, a low moan and a gasp, the taste of berries and rum. His hips pin me to the wall, shoulder blades digging into the rough wood. Fingers crawl into his hair, messing it up, sliding to his course jaw, feeling his warmth, his strength. He grips my hip, drawing a leg around his waist, giving him access to agonizingly grind against my heated core. Another gasp leaves my lips, but he steals the gasp by plunging his tongue into my mouth, a war passing between us. His fingers bite into the soft skin of my thigh and I know there’ll be bruises, a part of me relishing the idea of being marked again by this man in the height of passion, the only thing we ever seemed to be good at together.

A loud knock on the door has Arthur leaning back slightly. Suddenly the world crashes over my head like a bucket of ice and that fury is back, the frustration and rage.

I shove Maxson away from me and he stumbles, not nearly quick enough to avoid the fist that slams into his jaw. His head whips back and he grunts. I step forward, not knowing whether it’s rage or lust that makes my heart thud against my ribs. This man always has a way of igniting both.

He rubs his jaw, looking at me with that fierce gaze of his.

“Get out,” I growl, hand on my gun. Silence stretches between us, filled with an energy that threatens to choke me. To love this man or to ruin him as he ruined me. “There will be no negotiations, your _Brotherhood_ is not wanted in this land. If you want a war, then I will give you a war.”

“You will not survive a war, Annabel.”

“I’ve already survived two. Let’s not continue to talk about how much you underestimate me. It won’t end well for you.”

“Don’t underestimate the Brotherhood.” He straightens slowly but I just laugh in his face.

“I’ve seen the belly of the Brotherhood of Steel, this entire time I’ve been _overestimating_ it. You’re a good soldier, Arthur, but you’re a weak leader. Don’t make me show you how weak you really are.”


End file.
